Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I (2 page)

Lord Meravon had given his permission, but he had not given his blessing, for nothing was ever to reconcile him to the match: he was determined on that. It was a mistake, a tragedy, which they were all to rue for the rest of their days. Lady Frances would pine for her home and parents, and find no comfort in a man almost twice her age and half her fortune; Mr. Parry would shortly come to see the blockheaded folly of allying himself to a woman who must always be conscious of the disparity of their births, and the inferiority of her present position, and be made wretched by it; and the Earl himself would never cease to deplore every aspect of it in the strongest terms.

My heroine, Julia, making her entrance upon the stage of history scarcely a year later, was pronounced universally charming in the dual role of First Granddaughter, and Chief Mediator, and received an appointment in his lordship’s affections, which no other child was ever to receive. His dire predictions of universal regret dissipated at the touch of one tiny finger, never to be heard again. Indeed, so completely did they disappear, that it seemed doubtful if they had ever been. He certainly never gave any one cause to believe that such inconsistencies had ever passed his lips. Other men, their words proven wrong, blush, and acknowledge, and rescind: the Earl found it more convenient to lose a portion of his memory.

His ignorance of children was almost comprehensive, and he is not to be blamed for it that Julia was not irretrievably spoilt before the assembling of her milk-teeth. She herself said, in later years, that “were it not for the unceasing vigilance of her parents, she would doubtless have grown in vanity and petulance, and in disfavor with God and man.”

The Parrys’ efforts on Julia’s behalf were materially assisted by their eventual removal to Clapham--from whence Mr. Parry was better able to discharge his duties as a charter and very active member of the Proclamation Society--and the advent of her sister Kitty, born not quite three years later. Julia was for a considerable time convinced of her parents having acquired Kitty primarily for the amusement of their eldest daughter; and her pride of ownership being thus engendered, she took a particular interest in everything that concerned this latest acquisition, and watched over her with a possessive eye. Kitty was always a delicate, nervous infant, given to starts, and bouts of inexplicable weeping; but Julia’s somewhat dutiful stewardship changed to enchantment upon the discovery that Kitty would smile and babble for her, when even the caresses of a nursemaid provoked only heart-broken tears.

No mere doting grandfather could hope to compete with these inarticulate attractions, and he, perhaps disillusioned by this evidence of inconstancy in one he had hitherto deemed flawless in all particulars, came gradually to a more reasonable estimation of Julia’s merits. Taking warning from this experience, he never again offered his heart so freely to fickle youth, and his regard for the subsequent little Parrys was on a restrained order which much relieved the minds of their parents. Not even Clive, who, when on his good behavior, was surely the most winsome child ever to patter across the earth, could call forth much beyond the phrase, “a remarkably fine boy, Fanny, remarkably fine,” a tentative pat on the head, and once, at least, the offer of a fob-watch for inspection. As it is rumored that Lord Meravon’s watch had kept time perfectly well B.C.--“B.C.” signifying, in this instance, as if often did in the Parry home, “Before Clive”--it is possible that his lordship’s reserve may have sprung from this very circumstance.

In Julia’s fifth year Lady Meravon was struck by a fever as swift as it was fatal, and her loss plunged the Earl into a black depression, which astonished his acquaintances as much as it alarmed his intimates. Lady Frances was urged to join him in his retreat to the country, and a canvas of the many advantages was spread persuasively before her: she would be able to bring up her increasing family in an environment entirely free from the influences of town, whilst at the same time providing comfort to her father in his distress, and the guidance of a mother to her two youngest brothers, whenever they should not be in school (the twins Torial and Thomas, aged twelve years, and rather less acquainted with their father than was the butler). In addition, may it be said, to relieving all of his lordship’s many solicitous relations of a great uneasiness, by allowing them to pity him very earnestly, untouched by any fear of ever being called upon to aid him in any practical and inconvenient fashion.

Lady Frances and Mr. Parry were not proof against this depiction; or it is conceivable that their minds were entirely decided before its presentation. However it may have been, they were soon making plans to take up residence in the Dower House, against the advice of any number of friends, who, familiar with the ways of the Earl, predicted in strong language that to imagine it possible to raise up a family under any roof belonging to him, without being prepared to submit to all manner of interference, was sheerest folly.

But so it did not prove. Lord Meravon, recovering gradually from the oppression of spirits, if not from the grief that had caused it, showed no disposition to meddle in the rearing of his grandchildren. His tendresse for Julia had been but an aberration: he did not understand children, and took no pains to dissemble it. They made him nervous, and he did not know what to do with them if some authoritative figure was not by to whisk them away when they asked incomprehensible questions, or became troublesome. He liked “Fanny’s darlings” very well, but he wished them to remain tucked up quietly in the nursery until they were old enough to grasp his views on the State of the Nation, and listen with proper appreciation to his exhaustive denunciations of the Hon. Charles Fox.

And so the Parrys, who had envisioned perhaps a year or two north of the Avon, became inevitably fixed at Merriweather. There the three youngest children--Margaret, Louisa, and Idelette--were born; and there my heroine dwelt in great contentment until her nineteenth year, when her grandfather’s partiality sprang up in a rather unexpected form, and impelled her, willy-nilly, to London.

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Let it at once be said in extenuation of Lord Meravon, that Julia seemed expressly fashioned to dazzle and reign in Society. One might have commented that Miss Parry was a very pretty girl, as one might comment that the surface of the sun is very hot--both assertions being notable for their truth, simplicity, and almost stunning inadequacy.

In all likelihood Mrs. Northcott gave voice to the convictions of the majority when she opined to her daughter that, “If the Parrys persist in their intention not to take Julia up to Court, it will be an illustration of unworldliness indistinguishable from stupidity. She had not thought that even of them.”

The Northcotts were the inhabitants of Hellwick Hall, a much smaller estate bordering Merriweather. It was accepted at Hellwick that the Parrys were to be indulged for their position, pitied for their contentment, and despised for opportunities left unseized; and if, in his efforts to conform to these correct but not altogether compatible sentiments, Mr. Northcott’s became on occasion so convoluted as to be easily mistaken for a kind of wistful envy, such lapses were not regarded. He was a quiet man, possessed of a comfortable income, and a lineage so riddled with titles of every description, that it was a source of amazement that one of them had not already devolved upon his person. This promising lineage had won for him his lady, who was possessed of an Ancient Name, and particularly elegant, Elizabethan hands, to which she was devoted. Her excesses in gloves, lotions and rings aside, Mrs. Northcott was a woman of sense, and having been denied that standing in society which would have made her arrival in town a matter of consequence and expectation, she had for years bowed to the unaccountable whims of Providence, and divided her year between Hellwick Hall and Bath. I do not say she was resigned to her lot: not for her, the meek renunciation of Thy-will-be-done. Rather, she acknowledged, with regret, her inability to persuade Providence of the superiority of her own designs, and inclined her head, as one stiffly conceding the victory to an opponent boasting an unfair advantage. Had she been the one to create the universe, you may be very sure she would not have abused her powers, by refusing her creatures the honors they deserved by prolonging, to a ridiculous extent, the respiration of various ancient in-laws.

Nor was this her sole grievance. Heaven had apparently marked the Northcotts out for adversity from the very beginning of their connection, though as Mrs. Northcott was not, as she herself acknowledged, one to make a display of her afflictions, perhaps none but themselves knew how severe and unrelenting these were. For instance, instead of a son whom they might vaunt and spoil, and heap with all the educational privileges designed to turn out the Perfect Well-Bred Young Gentleman (after the model of the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, whom Mrs. Northcott claimed as a relation, though one distant-almost-to-the-point-of-invisibility), the Northcotts had been given, after many years’ wait, a mere daughter, and one, moreover, who was seen at once to have inherited a thoroughly commonplace pair of hands. Furthermore, Ann---named for an obdurate great-aunt who, declining to take the hint, left her fortune elsewhere--was not even prudent enough to come laden with the good looks and amenable disposition which must assure her, if nothing else, the approbation of her parents in the ease and advantage with which she could be puffed off and married. She was, on the contrary, in no way remarkable in either face or form, and further augmented her deficiencies by falling, Humpty-Dumptylike, off a wall at the age of fifteen, and injuring herself so as to be in some measure affected by it for the rest of her life. What was to be done with so thoughtless a girl? What said of one who could commit an act so against the interests and desires of her unsuspecting parents? Mrs. Northcott was not unnaturally disgusted, but years of self-command enabled her to conceal her feelings from everybody except her husband and daughter, the surgeon, the handful of houseguests wishing they had taken their departure the day before, and the half a score of servants who moved quietly about, looking deaf, and anticipating the sudden increase of their popularity below stairs.

By now, my reader may well be forgiven for thinking that I have wandered rather far from the declared subject of this history. I assure you I have not. As unsatisfactory as Ann was in general, she had managed, entirely by accident, to attach herself to the Parrys at a very young age. Mrs. Northcott had never been able to fathom quite how it had come about, or why they should have permitted, even invited, the encroachment; but that they did so was beyond dispute. Even when most exasperated with her daughter’s heedless ways, she could not wholly forget this circumstance, and Ann soon discovered, that the most trifling allusion to Merriweather, was enough to check the full spate of her mother’s disapproval, and direct her thoughts in happier channels.

At first the Parrys were concerned that Ann should not give offense by neglecting family for friends, but Mrs. Northcott, when she heard of it, hastened to dispel such a groundless fear. Ann herself was always careful to arouse no suggestion of ill-feeling between the houses; she went frequently to call on her parents; she paid them every respect and attention which they could be thought to deserve; more, in fact, than they desired. Mr. Northcott, if he thought of it at all, doubtless thought only how pleasant it was that Ann should be so easily disposed of; it was left for his wife to appreciate in full the benefits of this unexpected intimacy between her luckless daughter and a family of such note. As the years passed it became a matter of lament that Meravon’s heir (and his son) were no-one-knew-where on the continent, and that the younger sons of the house were equally inaccessible--one at school or University, and the other always away fighting various groups of discontented natives in the name of the King. But still it did Ann no harm to be seen everywhere in the thick of the Parrys. A less sensible parent might have been supposed to grieve over the inevitable contrast between Miss Northcott and Miss Parry, but Mrs. Northcott took comfort in the knowledge, that any girl must have displayed ill beside Julia, as even a wax candle must be overlooked in broad sunlight. Ann, being no more than tallow, made the waste minimal.

So the friendship was promoted on every side, and Mrs. Northcott had her reward in the year one, when the Earl’s eldest son, William, was so obliging as to expire in France, insuring the return of the heir in a young and marriageable state, in the person of a grandson. Viscount Merivale, arriving at Merriweather to find Ann firmly entrenched in his family, accepted her presence as a matter of course, and affection as her due. This was very gratifying indeed. Mrs. Northcott began to hope that Heaven had at last come to realize its hideous mistake in apportioning out years of adversity to such a one as herself, and in this hope she promptly descended on Ann with prints, and opinions, and a horde of pin-lipped dressmakers and milliners, which vexed that young lady very much, by keeping her home with fittings, when she longed to be at Merriweather.

Alas, for Mrs. Northcott! The hordes had scarcely retreated--leaving behind colorful heaps of taffeta and muslin, but somehow having failed to transform her daughter into the heir-snaring belle she had ordered--when Lord Merivale took it into his head to purchase a commission in the army, and removed, with no sign of Annward regret, to a camp in Kent.

A partial screen must be placed before the extravagances of a mother’s indignation. The unspeakable selfishness of a young man of rank and fortune, electing to take up arms for his country rather than idle around giving her daughter a chance to attach him--! Well, she would not have thought it of him. Her only consolation was, that when he
did
return, it must be in a scarlet coat; a sartorial privilege which, she trusted, would not be entirely thrown away even on a figure as negligible as that of Lord Merivale.

Here Ann felt called upon to make a trifling correction. “It is a rifle regiment, Mama. Julia says he is not to be in scarlet, but green.”

This ill-timed intelligence was, it transpired, all that was necessary to complete Mrs. Northcott’s disillusionment. From the bitterness of her response, Ann inferred that, had he joined for the express purpose of procuring a red coat, her mother would have thought the better of him for it. It was about this time that Torial Merrion also returned to England, after a sojourn of some eight years in India, and he
did
return clad in scarlet. But what was a younger son to a young apparent, a major to a viscount? Nothing at all. And in any event he soon took himself off to Kent as well, and slipped even from that infinitesimal portion of Mrs. Northcott’s thoughts, which he had briefly occupied.

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